Ordinary People

The sun has slipped behind the yellow leaves of the big pecan tree at the end of the block, and the boys in shorts and T-shirts playing football in the street are slapping their bare arms to keep warm.

In the fading light, Kathy Gieb’s 13-year-old son, Frankie, intercepts the ball and holds it above his head like a trophy. “Yes!” yell his teammates. “Yesssssss!”

“He is good at sports,” says his mother, watching from the front stoop. “He does well at everything, really. We are so blessed, so very blessed.”

From where they stand, life looks pretty good to Kathy and Joe Gieb. Although at 3 feet, 10 inches and 4 feet, 5 inches, respectively, the Giebs’ view on the world is different, it is no less pleasant or unpleasant than that of many in what they call the “tall world.”

Which is not to say their lives are uncomplicated. With pedal extenders for driving, stools for reaching things, pillows for propping up, and a customized mix of scaled-down fixtures and appliances for cooking, bathing and grooming, they pursue ordinary lives in the face of extraordinary obstacles.

According to actor and activist Billy Barty, who founded Little People of America, families like the Giebs (pronounced Gibbs), who received the LPA’s 1998 Distinguished Service Award, “are living proof that the only space barrier we have to conquer is the one between our ears.”

Such flattery makes Joe uncomfortable. As an actor, he has appeared with Cathy Rigby in “Peter Pan,” as Donald Duck in “Disney on Parade,” and as a leprechaun stalking Jay Leno in a St. Patrick’s Day skit on “The Tonight Show.” Both Joe and Kathy also work as stand-ins for child actors in a variety of sitcoms, while staying active in their church and their son’s school.

“But don’t put us on a pedestal,” pleads Joe. “Except for our size, we’re like a lot of California families. People should understand, we’ve had a great life.”

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Joe’s father, Edward, was a big man--6 feet tall and about 210 pounds. A pharmacist and rancher in Fort Worth, Texas, he and wife Virginia already had three sons when Joseph Weldon arrived on April 24, 1954.

Because he weighed 7.5 pounds and was almost 21 inches long, his parents assumed he’d be big like his dad and brothers.

“But when he was 6 months old and still couldn’t sit up,” Virginia recalls, “I took him to the doctor and that’s when we found out. The orthopedic man said the bones from his elbows down and from his knees down wouldn’t grow to full size. His torso would grow, but not the arms and legs.”

Although his brothers--one is now a veterinarian and another the former district attorney in Fort Worth--thought Joe “got away with murder as a kid,” their mother says he did chores like the rest, working around the ranch and heaving hay bales out for the cattle every day after school.

“Joe went to Catholic schools, was in Scouts and he bowled and played baseball. Of course, football was out,” his mother says. “He was and is a terrific athlete, but I wouldn’t let him play.”

She scattered stools around the house for him to stand on, but sometimes Joe couldn’t be bothered.

“If he wanted a drink, I remember how he’d get a butcher knife out of the drawer and jump up and push one of the glasses out of the cabinet,” Virginia says. “Even now, when he comes home to visit, he’ll do that and everyone says, ‘Oh, Joe, not again. You’re gonna break a glass.’ Course he never does.”

Although the money was there for college, Joe didn’t go. Well, not exactly.

“At 18 I went to clown college,” he says. “That was my dream.”

But it was his mother’s nightmare.

“When we put him on that circus train that night, it was just pitch dark, and I said to Ed, ‘We’re crazy. We may never see this kid again.’ ”

After five months, Joe too decided the circus life was not for him. But he didn’t rush home. Instead, he began a series of jobs and tours that took him around the world--stopping in South America long enough to have an emergency surgery in Bogota, Colombia.

By the time he returned to the States, Joe was well-acquainted with Barty’s Little People activist group and looked to the organization as a place to meet people who looked more like him.

“I’d grown up around tall and average-sized people, and I think that’s a good thing, but it’s also kind of like going home when you find yourself surrounded by other little people,” he says.

At an LPA gathering in Los Angeles, Joe watched as a group of men gathered around one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. It was Kathy, and one of the men around her was her husband.

“I just had to feel sorry for the guy,” Joe recalls. “Here was this gorgeous gal and all these other guys hitting on her.”

By the time of the next year’s convention, Kathy was available and Joe did not hesitate to ask her out.

*

Katherine Ann Pennisi is the second daughter of Frank and Rachel Pennisi. A few years after she was born in New York City on Nov. 21, 1959, her father became vice president of the huge brokerage firm Merrill Lynch. When she was 2 weeks old, her mother noticed she wasn’t developing in the same way her sister had. “She wasn’t lifting her head, and her legs looked a little different. When she was 5 months old, it was confirmed. It was achondroplasia.”

There are more than 200 syndromes--collectively known in medicine as dwarfism--that can cause short stature. Achondroplasia is the most common, and occurs once in every 26,000 births. In 75% of the cases, it affects families in which the parents and siblings are all of average height.

What seems like a cosmic accident is in fact the result of a genetic anomaly that may express itself only once every five or six generations, if at all. For a baby to be born an achondroplastic--or an “achon,” as little people abbreviate it--both parents must have one copy of the changed gene. When achons have a baby, there is a 50-50 chance that the child will be born with dwarf characteristics. Although the gene for the condition has been identified and can be ruled out through amniocentesis, researchers say few average-size couples consider even testing for it.

When Kathy was diagnosed, her mother was at first shocked and worried about her daughter’s future. But doctors assured her that her auburn-haired baby, though likely to be a small adult, was very healthy and very bright. “From the beginning, I believed she could do whatever she put her mind to, and I told her that,” recalls Rachel Pennisi. “She was an extraordinary child, very organized and neat and orderly like me--not like her sister, I’m afraid. Sometimes, Kathy cordoned off her sister’s messy room with a string.”

But after a successful year in a public kindergarten, the Pennisis decided to enroll Kathy in their parish school in Brooklyn. The principal, a religious sister, told Kathy and her mother that the school wasn’t geared for children who were different. “Kathy turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t they want me here?’ I couldn’t answer her because I was so choked up.”

The next day, both parents returned to the school. “We told the principal that my daughter would attend that school or we would take up this issue with the pope. And we would have.” Kathy was admitted. And a year later, she and her family accepted the principal’s apology.

*

When Kathy met Joe for the second time, she was swept off her feet. She was a knock-out and still wildly popular. “But during high school, even with all the friends I’d had from all those years of private school, I never got asked to dance. I spent a lot of lonely weekends while my beautiful sister was out with her many dates,” she says.

“But when I got involved in LPA, well, it changed my whole life. Everybody asked me to dance, wanted my phone number, tried to flirt. I felt like . . .”

“Like you belonged?” Joe finishes her sentence.

“Right, like I really belonged,” says Kathy. “But in high school, Joe dated average-size girls.”

“But I didn’t get too far,” he laughs. “I could be everybody’s friend but when it came down to dating . . . “

“It was, ‘See ya,’ ” says Kathy.

“Right,” says Joe.

*

Two days before Thanksgiving, Kathy and Joe go to their neighborhood Ralphs market to shop for their holiday meal. They always market very early or very late to avoid the crowds. And the stares.

“It’s not as bad here as it is at a Kmart at 2 on a weekend afternoon,” says Kathy, “but you know, there are the stares. A lot of kids mostly. They stare and sometimes point and it’s very annoying. I figure they just haven’t learned manners from their parents. They think, ‘Little people, little minds.’ Maybe they think it’s funny. It’s not funny.”

But for Joe, actor by trade, and spotlight lover by nature, “Using size to grab the public attention can be a good thing.”

“Well,” says Kathy with a dismissive wave of the hand, “not for me. I hate it.”

Kathy recalls how her mother stopped bringing home midget gherkins from the pickle shelves because the word “midget”--now considered obsolete, as well as offensive--could cause her, or her mom, to burst into tears.

Joe’s family, on the other hand, showered him with tiny gifts at every occasion. “I loved it! Miniature chocolates, liqueurs, everything!”

They also disagree--politely--about the image Joe projects when he takes the usual “dwarf actor roles.” As Kathy says, “He doesn’t mind doing the stereotypical stuff. I do. I won’t do elf, leprechaun, clown. When I was young, my parents took me to the circus, and I saw the clowns and I thought to myself, ‘Is that all I can do in life?!’ ”

Her first job out of high school was at a brokerage house on Wall Street. “It was pretty high pressure but just getting to my office on the 20th floor was the biggest challenge. The elevator buttons were heat activated so I couldn’t poke it with my umbrella, I had to wait every day for a taller person to get on and push the button for my floor,” Kathy says.

Since enactment of the American Disabilities Act, elevator panels, as well as pay phones, are built low enough for even the most diminutive reach. But the ADA hasn’t helped little people as much as it should, says Barty. “You don’t know what discrimination means till you go into a restroom where everything is for people in wheelchairs. We need to improve access for everybody, including little people.”

Joe’s height, however, has not prevented him from building a career in the entertainment industry. But Kathy had other dreams. “From the time I was very young, I wanted to be a stewardess and a homemaker and a mother. Well, I got two out of three. I’ll survive.”

Frankie, who like his parents is not expected to grow to average height, doesn’t have a clue about what he’ll be. But he gets good grades, plays the keyboard, collects autographed baseballs, is an excellent swimmer, likes Tyra Banks and is locally famous for giving the best birthday parties in Burbank.

Most of his friends--and he has many--are average size. That’s fine with his folks.

“We had great childhoods, and we’ve tried to make sure he does too,” Kathy says. “He’s comfortable with who he is, and though most of his friends are average size, we want him to be able to move easily between both worlds.”

She glances back to the street where the football game is winding down.

“See that boy in the black shorts? He’s a full year younger than Frankie, but . . . he’s tall.”

*

For more information about little people, phone The Little People of America toll free (888) LPA-2001 or contact the LPA Web page at https://www-bfs.ucsd.edu/dwarfism/lpa.htm.